Stories begin to emerge.
12 » From the depths ...
Dungeoneering arrives.
14 » ... To the skies
The rise of Clan Citadels.
16 » Once and future
RuneScape enters a new era.
2

PRESENTS RUNESCAPE

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E N T S

ver the course of its 12-year
history, RuneScape has
won awards and set
Guinness World
Records. It has been
played by hundreds of
millions of people, and
spent the better part of a
decade as the most popular
free MMORPG in the west.
All this from one of Britain’s most
successful indie developers – Jagex,
a studio that has grown from a
handful of people to over 500 in the
lifespan of a single game. RuneScape
is one of the biggest stories in online
gaming – and yet it’s a story that, until
now, has gone largely untold.

Over the next 18 pages, we delve
deep into the history of the game,
talking to the developers who have
been there from the beginning about
their experience of working on an everevolving online world. We explore
RuneScape’s biggest triumphs and bestkept secrets, from the major landmarks
in its ongoing development to the
small personal touches that define its
spirit. This is a game that has come a
long way in 12 years.
Whether you’re a current RuneScape
player, someone who used to play, or
someone who has never logged on –
welcome. The world’s greatest
adventure is out there, and it’s getting
bigger all the time.

TIMELINE
January 2001

March 2001

The first version of RuneScape is launched to the
public – running from a bedroom in Nottingham.

‘Good’ and ‘Evil’ spellcasting is made
available to adventurers for the first time.

RuneScape Classic Launched

The Discovery Of Magic

PRESENTS RUNESCAPE 3

2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013

2001-2002

Genesis

R

uneScape has evolved in
parallel with the rest of
the MMORPG genre,
but its origins aren’t in
online roleplaying games
as we understand them today. “A lot
of us that were involved in the early
days of the game are all traditional
roleplayers, whether that’s tabletop
roleplaying, live action roleplaying,
or storytelling,” says design director
Mark Ogilvie. “Our grounding isn’t in
the digital format. That’s one of the
things that sets us apart from the rest.”
The result is an expansive online
game whose mixed heritage includes
pen and paper games as well as the
text-based MUDs (multi-user
dungeons) that dominated parts of
the nascent online roleplaying scene
in the 1990s. Like Ultima Online,
RuneScape started off as an attempt
to apply the depth and emergent
potential of a MUD to a game with a
level of graphical fidelity that hadn’t
been achieved before. The goal of a
graphical MUD wasn’t simply to
provide content to complete, but a
world to occupy: a persistent online
space with mechanics that structure
player action without placing undue
restrictions on it.

“It was built because the founders at
the time [brothers Andrew and Paul
Gower] were at university, going from
one university laboratory to another.
They wanted to be able to play a
game on the PCs, but found it very
frustrating that they had to install it
every single time they went to a new
PC.” Subsequently, RuneScape was
built on “the concept of something
easily accessible and browser-based,
but using a code language [they] could
quickly iterate on”.
The tiny team at Jagex – described
by early hire Ian Taylor as “three or
four people in an office with a laptop”
– got the game out in front of the
public quickly and established a rapid
update schedule that hasn’t abated

since. The game entered beta with
just six quests and a handful of skills –
but even at that early stage, the game’s
principles of open levelling, long-form
storytelling and player freedom were
in evidence.
“Whatever mood you’re in with
RuneScape, there will always be
something cool for you to get involved
with,” Ogilvie says, defining the
game’s remit – both then and now –
as escapism. Nonetheless, its
accessibility and connected nature
gave it additional real-life purpose that
its creators didn’t anticipate.
“I think one of the early reasons for
RuneScape’s success is that it was a
social network,” says Jagex CEO Mark
Gerhard, who joined the company
Tens of thousands of people
played in the first year.

Accessibility first

Unlike its peers, RuneScape was built
to run in Java through a browser. It
was a technically ambitious move that
has reaped dividends for developer
Jagex in the long run – but at the time,
the decision was a matter of simple
convenience, as Ogilvie explains.
May 2001

December 2001

Adventurers find religion in the form
of the stat-boosting Prayer Skill.

RuneScape’s first holiday event scatters
festive hats across the land.

Prayers, Answered

4

Magic was an early addition.
Wizard hats optional.

PRESENTS RUNESCAPE

It’s Christmas!

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DEV PROFILE

IAN TAYLOR
Audio developer

later, in 2008. “As much as it was a
Tolkien-esque medieval fantasy
environment, you look at the statistics
and you’ll see 10-15 per cent of our
players in the lobby at any one time,
not playing the game, just hanging
about chatting and being social.”
These values – creativity, sociability,
and versatility – provide useful
touchstones while unpicking the
game’s long history.
Over the course of RuneScape’s first
year, the online landscape changed.
The dot-com bubble burst in 2000,
necessitating a rethink of the
advertising model that had supported
the game in its early months. In
February 2002, paid subscriptions
were introduced – a recurring fee that
earned members access to exclusive
skills, quests, and other content. The
popularity of the game spread, almost
entirely through word-of-mouth.
“RuneScape was snowballing like
crazy,” Ogilvie says. “Our players were
our advertising force.” By the end of
2002, the game had been played by
over a million people – and both the
game and its developer had to expand
to accommodate them.

Ian was one of Jagex’s earliest hires,
starting off in customer support and
progressing through content development
before becoming a full-time sound designer
on RuneScape. His work now includes
composing music, recording sound effects,
and overseeing voiceovers.

I was a kid as well, so it was relatively natural
that I got into this kind of career.

What was it like when you started
working on RuneScape?
Everyone had to do everything – that was my
day. Now, I can spend all the time that I need
to really develop sounds, and not just take
a stock sound from a library and plonk it in
the game.
In the early days, one day I’d make a map,
or the graphics for a castle, the next day I’d
be answering e-mails from customers, the
day after that I’d be writing music – a bit
of everything. This gave me a really good
grounding in the game, a good understanding.
You ended up getting spread quite thinly, but
it was a small team so you were expected to
do what needed to be done.

What defines RuneScape from a sound
designer’s point of view?
The thing about RuneScape is it’s kind of...
one game fits them all, if you like. You can run
around a corner from killing a dragon and you
may be interacting with jolly trolls, or clowns
– or who knows what? We’ve got darker music
for the more immersive storylines. One of the
challenges is trying to bring all these elements
together so that it becomes a whole, rather
than individual parts. RuneScape is very varied
so it needs to have variation in the audio, but
it still needs to sound like one game.
One of the best things about our team is
that we can exercise our creative abilties –
we’re relied on to do that. We work with the
developers and the designers to try to bring
an idea across, but it’s got to come from us,
from inside ourselves. There’s a lot of identity
from me, as well as from everyone who works
on the game.

What was the sound design aspect like
back then?
There was nothing really there in terms of
audio in the early days, so we all had to come
up with a plan and it... sort of grew out of
nothing, really.
I’ve been playing keyboards for many
years – that’s my love, synthesisers and music
technology. I did a bit of programming when

Is there any part of your work on the
game that you’re particularly proud of?
There are a couple of quests where everything
gelled: the sound effects, the voiceover,
and the music. There are some really good
examples of that in the ‘One Piercing Note’
and the ‘Queen Black Dragon’ quests – these
are fantastic storylines and I hope that they’ve
got some awesome audio in there as well.

April 2002

July 2002

September 2002

The Thieving skill lets players pursue
a less-than-honourable life of crime.

Mark – who is known to the RuneScape
community as Mod Mark – is the game’s
most senior designer. He celebrated his
tenth year on RuneScape in February, and
is credited with overseeing some of the
most dramatic new additions to the MMO
in its history.
How did you celebrate ten years of
working on the game?
The art team commissioned some art: a
picture of me in RuneScape garb as the
captain of a ship! It was pretty cool and lots of
people signed it. I got a shiny watch. I had a bit
of a celebration with the players in the game
as well: I have a friend’s chat channel I use to
communicate with the players to talk about
ideas and get a better feeling for how the
community is. We had a celebration on there.
What was Jagex like when you joined?
We were a very green company. There was an
entrepreneurial spirit here but there wasn’t
a lot of experience with traditional games
design – simple principles like core aims
or design documents. It was a much more
Eastern philosophy of games design, where
we’d just make things on screen and see what
looked cool.
What have been the major influences
on your work on RuneScape?
More than a lot of games, the root of
RuneScape is very much in traditional

July 2003

Pets Win Prizes

Players are able to earn their first
companion pets, starting with a cat.

6

PRESENTS RUNESCAPE

roleplaying games: the idea of an adventuring
party. A lot of the early ideas we had in the
game were very much based around old
roleplaying adventures that the founders or
myself were involved with – old games like
Monkey Island were a big influence on things
like RuneScape.
For myself, reference points that I always
give to my developers are films like The Dark
Crystal, which I think is really important. The
organic feel of the world and the dominance
of the characters that are involved – we use a
lot of references from films like that.
What are you keen for people to discover
in the game, that they may otherwise
have overlooked?
We’ve recently released three starter-level
quests that are fully voiced, have incredible
graphics and have got some of our best
storytellers on [them]. ‘One Piercing Note’ is
a particularly cool quest, which is about an
order of nuns that follow a certain element of
Saradomin – one of the gods we have in the
game – and one of the sisters has been found
dead. You get involved in a CSI-style quest
where you’re going around exploring various
different crime scenes and things like that.
I would try the Dungeoneering skill as well,
just because you don’t have to learn about the
rest of the game to enjoy it. The area of the
game is called Daemonheim. If you follow the
River Lum down from Lumbridge you’ll find
the boat to take you straight to Daemonheim.

November 2003

Forum Launched

The official discussion boards provide the
community with access to the developers.

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2003-2004

Breaking ground

J

Discover quests in the
Wizard’s Tower.

Fishing remains a
cornerstone of the economy.

RuneScape 2 radically
overhauled the game.

agex’s early growth and the
success of RuneScape didn’t
change the fact that the
game’s development was an
ongoing act of improvisation.
“Everything was very fluid in the way
that it was created,” explains Mark
Ogilvie. “It was very much individual
developer-led. They would come up
with the idea and the proof of concept,
get some code working and we’d see
what we liked and didn’t like. We’d
pretty much leave them to it for a
couple of months, and see what they
came up with.”
It’s easy to forget that RuneScape was
– and is – the product of an indie
studio, and some of that spirit is
evident in the way each part of the
game was put together in those early
days. In August 2003, RuneScape
launched its 50th story-driven mission
– Legends’ Quest. Like many of the
quests that would follow it, Legends’
Quest is the work of a single main
designer. In this way, it was possible for
individual creators to make their mark
on a game that is consumed differently
by millions of people. This is also,
Mark Ogilvie argues, a key part of
what makes the game British.

“I think a lot of the British culture
that we have is being proud of what we
are, as a company, but also trying not
to take ourselves too seriously,”
Ogilvie says. “You hear a lot about the
fact that we’ve got all these other
cultures that have influenced what
‘British’ means – I think the game is
very much the same kind of thing. We
allow these different developers to
make the game grow but they bring
very different styles... that in itself is
fundamentally British.”

A very British MMO

As multiple designers began to lead
the game in different directions, it
became increasingly clear that
RuneScape needed redeveloping in
order to accommodate their ambition.
Engine tweaks were a common part of
everyday development on the game,
but in its original form – a version of
the game that is now known as
RuneScape Classic – there was a lot that
couldn’t be done. The answer was
RuneScape 2, a comprehensive overhaul
of the concept that touched every part
of the game.
Launching in April 2004, RuneScape
2 featured full 3D graphics – as
opposed to RuneScape Classic’s faux 3D,
which used rotating sprites – and
numerous expansions to the game’s
underlying scripting engine. By
raising the bar technically, Jagex gave
themselves the freedom to expand the
game creatively – including, later in
the same year, the introduction of
dynamic objective-based PvP in the
Castle Wars update.
“The conversion from RuneScape
Classic into what we now call ‘proper’
RuneScape was a real catalyst for us,”
Ogilvie says. “We had to hire a hell of
a lot of new staff, and we needed to
make sure there was a more robust
procedure to go through to release
content. We needed to make sure that
those ideas were put in the right order
so they would benefit the game.”

April 2004

December 2004

A major overhaul, from graphics to server
structure – essentially, a whole new game.

The Castle Wars minigame adds capture the flag-style
PvP for the first time.

RuneScape 2 Launched

Have Fun Storming The Castle

PRESENTS RUNESCAPE 7

2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013

2005-2007

Evolution,
revolution

T

he transition to a more
structured way of
providing weekly updates
didn’t take place
overnight. Lead animator
Paul Brown, who joined the dev team
in 2006, describes his initial job as
much broader than the role he now
finds himself in.
“It was a very open structure. An
artist and a content developer – a
coder – would go into a room and
discuss how a project was going to
work, how a story arc was going to
develop. Everyone had almost equal
interest and equal input into how that
would develop. It was very much a
collaborative process.”
The massive RuneScape community
has always played a role in that
collaborative process, but with
hundreds of thousands of active
players to cater for by that point,
simply talking to people in-game
became less and less practical.
“In the early days, because our
community was quite small, we could

Controversial changes

There were a number of milestones in
2007 for both Jagex and RuneScape.
The Cold War quest series marked a
high point for the game’s sense of
humour. The introduction of the
Grand Exchange gave form and
structure to its sprawling network of
in-game traders. In August, the game
set the Guinness World Record for
Most Popular Free MMORPG.
In the eyes of veteran players,
however, one update stands out above
the others – the changes to the

Yeah, probably time to
call an exterminator.

Wilderness. RuneScape’s open-world
PvP area had the side effect of enabling
the exchange of in-game goods for real
money. As part of a wider effort to
crack down on unscrupulous play, the
zone – and with it, PvP – was altered
substantially. Frustrated players who
didn’t perceive the necessity of the
change staged in-game protests.
“I think every player at the time
would have said ‘the influence of gold
farmers or bots is causing a problem’,”
Ogilvie explains. “What we failed to
recognise was the gameplay impact.
There were a lot of players who wanted
the kind of high-risk gameplay [that]

July 2005

March 2006

May 2006

With the addition of Farming, adventurers
can harvest crops and grow trees.

RuneScape’s 100th quest is a challenge for
newbies and veterans alike.

have a personal relationship with all of
our players,” says Mark Ogilvie. “We
could listen to all of their queries and
help them on an individual basis. We
would log in to the fansites and speak
to the players there.
“As the company grew, it became
impossible to continue with that level
of communication – and I think, to an
extent, we were too nervous about the
fact that not everyone was going to like
everything we did.”

PRESENTS RUNESCAPE

Recipe for Disaster

Engine Upgrades

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The Hunter skill lets
players trap animals.

DEV PROFILE

ASH BRIDGES
Senior content developer

Penguins plot world
domination in Cold War.

relied on the fact that huge amounts
of gold could transfer at any one time.
That’s what we changed, and that’s
why it was unpopular. I think the
motivations for the changes were
right, but we underestimated the
impact on genuine players.”
The upset over the Wilderness
changes highlighted Jagex’s need to
find new ways of engaging with their
public. At the same time, it illustrates
the depth of the community’s
investment – and the fact that the more
popular RuneScape became, the more
players had the power to define what
the game meant.

Ash has been working on RuneScape since
2005, but has been a player far longer
than that. Arriving at Jagex straight from
the community, he has progressed from
version control work to the design and
implementation of new content.
How did you find yourself working on
the game?
I started playing the game in university, and
by the time I graduated I was something
of an expert on RuneScape – I was a forum
moderator for Jagex. I played RuneScape
as my principle hobby, and I knew one or
two of the Jagex staff socially. Applying
to the company seemed a natural thing to
do because I didn’t want to move out of
Cambridge after graduating, so I joined the
support team. From there I was very fortunate:
I was able to work my way up to the content
team, taking field promotions where they
became available. I was very fortunate and
the company has been very good to me in
that regard.
Was your experience playing the
game useful?
It was. I was able to instinctively design
content that would appeal to RuneScape
players, because it would appeal to me. I
didn’t have to look too far for ideas because
I was a player. I could tell if something in the
game was bugging me, or missing, and request
to create it. It was a fairly smooth transition.

Out of everything you’ve done on the
game, what are you proudest of?
I’m particularly proud of the wise old man.
He’s a character in RuneScape who’s featured
in various quests that I’ve written. We
designed his house with a few accoutrements
– a globe, a telescope – and it was pointed
out that his telescope seemed to be aimed at
the nearby bank. From that we got the idea
that maybe he wants to rob the bank. So I
developed the character towards him being a
corrupt and sinister person who seems good
on the outside – but inside, he’s the kind of
man who would rob a bank just because he
wants the money.
The players responded very well to this,
partly because he didn’t behave like normal
characters in the game – he wasn’t focused
on the game’s storylines, he was focused on
himself. That came about sort of by accident.
And now the wise old man is one of the
signature features of RuneScape.
If the players want to run with something
and think it’s really cool, then as likely as not
we’ll run with it as well – but maybe not in the
direction they’ve got in mind! For a long time
the players wanted to develop the wise old
man as the embodiment of one of the gods
from years gone by. But instead, we gave him
a psychotic ex-girlfriend and let them fight
their way through his player-owned house,
which was modelled on [normal] playerowned houses, but slightly better – because
the wise old man is cleverer.

Achievements add new challenges for
veteran players and guidance for newbies.

RuneScape picks up the Guinness World
Record for Most Popular Free MMORPG.

Cold War

Task Masters

Record Breaker

PRESENTS RUNESCAPE 9

2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013

DEV PROFILE

DAVID OSBORNE
Senior narrative designer

David is responsible for ensuring that the
vast amount of background lore accrued
over more than ten years of the title’s
development comes together to support
the game that players encounter today.
He has overseen the work that has gone
into the three RuneScape novels, and has
written extensively on the history of the
game’s setting – Gielinor – to ensure that
it has a vibrant future.
What is your history at Jagex?
I was originally a games and music journalist
and I came here to make sure that all the
semicolons were in the right place! We were
really looking to improve the quality of the
dialogue and the standard of the English
within the game. I started giving game
feedback and really pushing it, and soon it
became clear that I had some design qualities
and was moving into narrative design – I
think the final turning point was editing the
RuneScape novels.
How does the process of writing
RuneScape differ now from when you
first started?
At the start, it was in one person’s head.
It wasn’t necessarily on a storyboard or
anything like that. It has been about drawing
together all these threads and trying to create
something that’s broad and engaging for the
new player, while still adding to the story that
the older players knew. So it’s trying to do that

and maintain a consistency and coherence of
the universe, while bringing it some focus.
What is your relationship with the
community like?
Ten years of expectation really – because
you’ve got people who’ve been there for ten
years! We’ve promised them certain stories,
and we really want to deliver them.
What would you recommend players do
when they first get in-game?
I’m always going to push people towards story
because I think that’s one of our unique points
– we have a certain seriousness about story.
You won’t find that you’re ‘fetch questing’
particularly: you’re not going to kill X wolves to
get Y reward. There’s a certain amount of time
that we expect from you with a quest. They’re
really meaty, interesting, choice-driven,
fundamentally attractive playing experiences.
What are you most pleased with out of
your work on the game?
I think the proudest thing for me is what will
be happening in the next couple of months.
We’re doing something that’s relatively new
to the gaming industry in terms of story, which
is that we’re moving the age forward. We’ve
built a system in which past content will still
be in the game, but we’re giving the player the
respect and the faith to understand that it’s in
the past. That’s how the next age that we’re
talking about is going to happen.

s RuneScape aged, the
amount of minigames,
quests and side content
that it offered continued
to grow. Distractions
and Diversions, which was introduced
in 2008, brought random events
designed to lead players away from
their fixed progression paths towards
new things to do.
These include reassembling
shattered statues, tracking down
shooting stars, and exploring
sinkholes. These events are designed
to produce unique stories – instances
in each play session where mechanics
and circumstance come together to
create something unrepeatable.
Sometimes, however, the players aren’t
the only ones surprised by the impact
of a new feature.
Also introduced in 2008 was
Stealing Creation, a competitive
minigame for both crafters and PvP
fighters. The intent was that warriors
would need to protect the noncombatants while they went about
their work – but in reality, players
figured out that it was more profitable

for both sides not to go to war at all.
Mark Ogilvie regards this unexpected
use of Stealing Creation as his
“kryptonite” – but it’s not something
Jagex are likely to overhaul. “They’d
taken the rules we’d given them and
twisted them into something else,”
Ogilvie says. “I don’t really have a
problem with the mindset behind that,
because they’re creative people. A lot
of our players have incredible ideas.”

Vox populi

While RuneScape’s emergent potential
was expanding, however, Jagex
continued to work to increase the
depth and fidelity of the game’s
directed storytelling. Voice acting,
introduced with the ‘Unstable
Foundations’ tutorial mission, is now a
feature in the majority of RuneScape’s
key storylines. “We’d only ever done
sound effects and music,” reflects
lead developer Tim Chadfield.
“[Voice] is a whole new dimension
when developing a game, and it adds
an enormous amount.”
RuneScape’s Britishness comes across
most clearly through its storytelling –

particularly in terms of humour.
“There are a lot of comedic references
in the game – traditional things that
people would say are very British, like
Monty Python, but I think you’ve got
a bit of Red Dwarf
in there as well,” Ogilvie explains. “I
think the old school gathered-aroundthe-campfire storytelling style is
fundamentally British – we try to
reflect that in the storytelling that we
have in the game.”
Localised versions of the game
started to launch from 2007, and
translating that British humour to
other languages presented a challenge.
“It’s fascinating working with the
translating team,” says Ogilvie. “The
style of humour that we use is there,
but they might use German
references. That’s absolutely fine
because the essence is still the same.
Putting a slightly different twist on it
to work well with other cultures is a
positive thing.”

Ninjas spend an inordinate
amount of time posing.

Branding trolls is
dangerous work.

February 2009

October 2009

The first Clan Cup tournament is hosted
by Jagex.

Jagex wins UK Developer of the Year at the
Golden Joysticks – and not for the last time.

When Two Clans Go To War

Golden Joysticks

PRESENTS RUNESCAPE 11

2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013

2010

From the
depths…

I

n 2010, a major new feature
made RuneScape more
accessible, cutting through
some of the feature-creep of its
middle years and giving players
quicker access to its most creative and
challenging content.
“We found that RuneScape was
becoming this unwieldy behemoth,”
Mark Ogilvie says. “It was proving
difficult for new players to get involved
with the game, and to find the pieces
of content they wanted to interact
with. A lot of players had a problem I
describe as ‘bank-stalling’, where you
log in to the game, you look at all the
equipment you’ve got in your bank,
you look at all the quests that you could
do – and you do none of it because
you’re sitting there thinking ‘what’s
the best thing for me to do?’”

The answer was the Dungeoneering
skill, an ability that lets players explore
dungeons generated on-the-fly based
on their skills and those of their party.
Dungeoneering served the needs of
both new and veteran players by
compacting several of the game’s ideas
into a single adventure influenced by
the same experiences that had sparked
many of the ideas behind RuneScape in
the first place.
“You could go on your own – or take
four mates – and you can create an oldschool roleplaying experience,”
Ogilvie explains. “You’ve got a boss
monster at the end, so you’ve got your
traditional boss fight. You’ve got to use
your skills along the way, so you’re
using your woodcutting, fletching,
farming or mining – whatever – to
complete challenges.”

Dungeon crawling

Well, that’s one way of
lighting a dungeon.

Dungeoneering had an energising
effect on RuneScape’s players. “We
started seeing the emergence of microcommunities,” Ogilvie says. “Groups
of four or five people who enjoy
Dungeoneering together. One of them
would be the mage, the smith, the

ranger – for me, that’s the kind of
old-school roleplaying feel that we
all enjoyed in the 1990s, which is
unfortunately dying out these days.
I’d love to be able to breathe some life
back into that feeling.”
While the amount of time needed
to fully master the game is vast, Jagex
have worked continually to add variety
to the critical path. “I look at all the
content we’ve got in the game and I
want to provide different ways for
them to engage with it,” Ogilvie says,
“whether that’s traditional and
hardcore or more communityoriented. I’d like to take that approach
with every single piece of content that
we have in the game.”
As a major update, Dungeoneering
was in production for more than 18
months, and all the while the game’s
pressing weekly update schedule
continued. In order to meet this
demand, the development of
RuneScape was subtly restructured.
“There’s the existing content team
and then the innovation team,”
explains Mark Gerhard. “We manage
this way because we need a more
dependable schedule, and over here

March 2010

August 2010

The first Signature Hero, Xenia, takes
players through a new adventure.

The first of several real-life RuneScape
celebrations takes place in London.

Xenia and the Blood Pact

12

PRESENTS RUNESCAPE

RuneFest

advertising feature

DEV PROFILE

TIM CHADFIELD
Lead developer
projects are more elastic and risky. It’s
like running Sky TV or something
like that – we don’t get to not do the
news on Friday.”
In this regard, RuneScape is industryleading, and was recognised in 2010 by
the Guinness Book of Records as the
world’s most frequently updated
MMO. “It’s fantastic,” reflects chief
marketing officer David Solari. “It
shows what can be achieved and how
the UK can be at the leading edge in
that kind of entertainment. It’s a great
achievement to have made, and a great
thing in the history of the UK games
industry as well.”
A new dungeon is randomly
generated every time.

Tim manages a group of 11 developers
designing and producing new diversions,
minigames and features for RuneScape.
He has been at Jagex for over seven years.
The company has changed dramatically
since you joined. Do you think players
perceive the shift in-game?
I think so. I’d like to think that the quality level
of the game has increased dramatically.
Can you provide an example of that within
your own work on the game?
One of the earlier pieces of content that I
worked on was called ‘Barbarian Assault’,
which I was pretty fond of. That was
something, again, where we were given a lot
of freedom because the company was a lot
smaller. There was a lot of risk involved with
giving someone a lot of freedom, but in certain
situations it paid off.
I was about to really think about what sort
of things I had not seen in RuneScape so far
and what I would like to add. I guess there are
all sorts of developers and people interested in
creating games who want to create something
that feels unique. They want to pull upon their
experiences and build something new. It was a
key project for me.
So how does Barbarian Assault work?
It’s a five player minigame where you get a
group of players in a dungeon and they’re each
given a unique role to fulfil. You have waves

of monsters that the players have to fight off.
I wanted to create something where the five
players had to co-operate – it wasn’t going to
be competitive in any way.
In order to do that, I gave each of the five
players a different piece of information that
they would need to use, but the individual
pieces of information would need to be shared
with one of the other five players. Not only do
they have to concentrate on the task that’s
set for them, they have to remember to keep
communicating with the other players and
giving them information.
Once you had that in your head, how did
you get it made?
Well, it always starts out as a brainstorm –
just jotting down on paper as many things
as you can possibly think of. Whether they’re
going to lead to anything or not isn’t the
purpose of the exercise. Then it comes down
to writing up a basic design and getting the
artists and the audio developer into a room
and talking through it.
Inevitably, everybody has extra ideas – I
think that with a project like this, as with any
project, we were keen to give some basic ideas
of the way things should feel and the way
they should potentially look – but then you
always find that the artists use their expertise
and they’ll come up with all sorts of strange
ways of making these creatures and monsters
that just adds that extra level of creativity to
the project.

September 2010

October 2010

Jagex revamp Romeo & Juliet, one of the
game’s first quests.

Jagex picks up another Golden Joystick.

Star-Crossed No More

UK Developer Of The
Year – Again

PRESENTS RUNESCAPE 13

2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013

DEV PROFILE

TURSAN RAJA
User interface artist

Tursan has been working on RuneScape as
a user interface artist since 2011. Her work
ranges from the Solomon Store to a wide
variety of mini-games and quests.
What lead you to work for Jagex?
I had been working on games for different
kinds of platforms – social games, mobile
games and stuff like that. I wanted to work
for an MMO and this is the best MMO there
is! When I came here, I just wanted to stick
around as I really love working on RuneScape.
How does working here differ from the
other games you’ve worked on?
It’s very, very disciplined and it’s by far the
biggest project I’ve ever worked on in my
life. That makes a huge difference. The team
is much bigger, but it’s different in every
possible way, really.
It’s more structured, and there is more to
do because we’re updating it constantly – it’s
exciting because every update is different
from the next. It keeps us on the edge.
With so many different artists working on
a team, how do you make sure that your
work coheres?
All those artists have a different style, but we
just work together to make sure that the style
stays consistent throughout. I don’t know
how that works, I really wish I had a simple
answer to that question! It’s a lot of
collaboration, I think that’s why we get that

result. Magic, maybe – a secret recipe that I
can’t share?
Do you have time to iterate on ideas,
working on a project this demanding?
Yes, all the time. We do iterate, and we do
change – we get constant feedback and we
can make changes. Obviously we have to stick
to a plan, but we also have to listen to what
players think. There’s always time – we have
to make time for it.
What guides you when you’re designing a
new interface for RuneScape?
I have to keep my interface as hidden as
possible so you’re not too conscious about
where you’re clicking – you just see the result
of that action. That’s the tricky bit. I have
to keep my most precious stuff hidden in a
corner. If it’s something that you’re clicking
instinctively without noticing, it’s a success.
Is there anything you’ve worked on that
you’re particularly proud of?
A lot of stuff! I enjoy quests, making minigames, making faces. I’ve also worked on
the Squeal of Fortune, and I’ve worked on
Solomon’s Store. An easier question would be
what I didn’t like...
So what didn’t you like?
You think I’m going to tell you that? No,
there’s hardly anything that I didn’t like really.
I really love it!

January 2011

February 2011

April 2011

RuneScape celebrates its tenth birthday
with in-game events.

The Wilderness is restored, and there
is much rejoicing.

The community starts building castles
in the sky.

Ten Years!

14

PRESENTS RUNESCAPE

Free Trade

Clan Citadels

advertising feature
2011

...To the skies

E

arly in 2011, Jagex took
a major step towards
building even stronger
ties with the RuneScape
community. Open-world
PvP was returned to the Wilderness
area of the game after close
consultation with players via the
forums and a poll.
“It was very much driven by player
sentiment,” Ogilvie says. “We allowed
them to vote over the future of the
game. That’s a pretty big step, and it
One Piercing Note is a
fully voiced story.

Working together is at the
core of Clan Citadels.

was a difficult thing for us to do. We
hadn’t really thought about the
community enough when we
originally made these big, sweeping
changes to the game.”
Since then, however, close contact
with the community has been the rule
rather than the exception. Senior
developers like Mark Ogilvie stay
in touch with players via in-game
friend channels and the forums, and
interactive elements like voting are
used more and more to steer Jagex’s
decision making.

Robot wars

Despite paying dividends in one area,
however, the reintroduction of open
PvP also returned the potential for
botting and real-world trading.
The answer was ClusterFlutterer –
a new bot detection programme that
was launched into the game shortly
after its announcement on the
evocatively-named ‘Bot Nuke Day’.
Jagex claim that the software has
removed 98% of all RuneScape bots,
and resulted – as of the 2011 RuneFest
event – in 7.7 million account bans.
Jagex held a series of bonus XP
events on and around Bot Nuke Day
to ensure that the player base knew
Arabian Nights has
been a big influence.

what was happening, and why – a
studied attempt to avoid the kind of
fallout that followed the Wilderness
changes in 2007.
Following close on the heels of
Dungeoneering, another major
game feature launched in 2011. Clan
Citadels gives groups of players the
ability to customise enormous
fortresses on floating islands in the
sky. “We wanted to give clans a home,”
explains game designer Sebastian
Davies. “Before Citadels, clans existed
almost exclusively in chat – we wanted
to give them a physical presence.”
Implementing these customisable
spaces required significant technical
expertise. “Before we could even start
building the content, we needed to
design some hefty and fiddly core
systems the likes of which we’d never
really built for RuneScape before,”
Davies continues. “Lots of challenges,
and a whole load of work, but we were
pleased with the result.”
It’s another instance where working
with the community has paid off. Clan
leaders were consulted, and a list of
desired features and changes drawn
up based on their input. “During
development we were pretty confident
we were tackling the right sort of
issues,” says Davies. “With all clan
projects it’s important that we involve
the community and take their
feedback seriously – after all, it’s about
giving them the tools they need to run
their clans.”
Players have found creative use for
Citadels since their release: while some
dedicate them to speeding up their
skill progression, others have used
them to host mini-games of their own,
like hide and seek.
Late 2011 also saw the release of One
Piercing Note, a quest series that is
resolutely popular with the game’s
developers. As the first RuneScape
storyline to be fully voiced from start
to finish, it’s one of the strongest selfcontained narratives in the game.

September 2011

October 2011

A decade-long quest series concludes with
the Ritual of the Mahjarrat.

The second RuneFest features game-themed
skilling challenges.

Mahjarrat’s Fall

RuneFest 2

PRESENTS RUNESCAPE 15

2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013

2012-2013

Once and future

I

f you create a new RuneScape
account today, your initial
experience of the game will be
very different to that of a new
player at the beginning of 2012.
In January, an extensive new tutorial –
the Troll Warzone – introduced
players to the game via an extensive
series of quests and events, even
including an oddly heartbreaking
moral decision regarding the fate of
an orphaned troll-baby.
Moreover, the way you go about
fighting your foes has changed
dramatically. Teased throughout
the year but launched in November,
the Evolution of Combat update
thoroughly reworked the mechanics
supporting battle in RuneScape. An
action bar has been added, allowing
players to hotkey shortcuts to new
combat skills, prayers, and more.

Added extras

Weapon special attacks have been
replaced with persistent, skilldependant combat techniques with
varying effects. Using these skills is
a much more active experience than
the previous system, and the revamp
has also provided Jagex with an
opportunity to fix long-standing
issues with the balance of melee,
ranged and magic combat styles.
The scale of the challenge facing
players has been increased, too.
RuneScape’s current big bad is the
Queen Black Dragon, a colossal enemy
equivalent to a raid boss in another
MMO. The business model has
evolved, too: 2012 saw the launch of
the game’s first microtransactions

“Er, hello? Bit of help
here? Guys? Hello?”

system, Solomon’s Store. CEO Mark
Gerhard trusts that players will stick
with Jagex as they try out new ways of
supporting the game’s development.
“For sure, there is a popular
sentiment against anything that is
successful or commercial,” he says.
“We all have pressures on our
paycheque at the end of the month,
but I think people still value quality,
and will pay for that,” he says. “I think
we’ve managed to make all those
transitions reasonably successfully
because we’ve always set out [their

necessity] very clearly. That’s helped
remove a degree of cynicism.”
The game celebrated reaching 200
million accounts in July 2012 – a
number not only indicative of the
game’s legacy, but of the ongoing
effort needed to accommodate its
growing community. At the time of
writing, Jagex has over 550 employees,
making it not only one of the largest
developers in the UK but one of the
biggest MMO developers in the world.

January 2012

June 2012

A new tutorial introduces players to the
game during the siege of Burthorpe.

The Diamond Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II is marked
in-game with events and a parade.

Troll Attack

16

PRESENTS RUNESCAPE

On Her Majesty’s Service

advertising feature

DEV PROFILE

MARK GERHARD
CEO

Mark joined Jagex as chief technology
officer in 2008, and became CEO in 2009.
He describes his role as CEO as “getting
stuff done” and is very, very fond of tanks.
What kind of challenges have you faced as
Jagex’s CEO?
The game grew organically; sometimes you
need to make investments to clear up that
technical debt, and we’ve done that. It’s
sometimes very easy to forget how far you’ve
come if you don’t take time to look back. I’m
super proud of the team and the tech we’ve
created. We’ve got world class infrastructure,
talent, systems, processes. We’re working on
some exciting next-gen stuff too.
You’ve described RuneScape as a social
network and as a service. Is the word
“game” still useful?
I’ve never thought of it as anything but that.
Jagex stands for ‘just the game experience’ –
I guess we’ve never even allowed ourselves to
think beyond that. The fact that we’re also a
platform, essentially a middleware developer,
and all these other things... all of those have
just been tools to provide a safe experience,
and a fun one.
The game has spread largely through word
of mouth. Has that made it hard to express
those values publicly?
I think on one level, it’s been great – this is the
world’s best-kept secret. When your friend

told you, it was like “wow, I’ve just discovered
something”. Perhaps that was a better
moment than when you’ve approached a
product cynically because it’s being advertised
to you. But I think we also missed out a bit
as an organisation on getting players to
understand what we’re passionate about, the
kind of experiences we want to give them and
our commitment to it.
Has the playerbase changed substantially
over the years?
Literally, we’ve taken them from boys to men.
I think part of the charm in the early days was,
as the first browser-based game in the West,
kids could play it at school when they may
not have had a computer at home. But we
have a great cohort analysis that shows how
that population has moved with [us] – you
can see, year after year, that our 13-yearolds are now 23. We’re not just producing
entertainment for kids – we’re producing
entertainment for ourselves.
Finally – how important is it to you as
a business, and as an entertainment
provider, that you own a tank?
It’s very important to me as a man. You
know what? It’s just fun. We try not to take
ourselves too seriously. We work hard and we
work with smart people. We try to remember
that life is about good things, and having
a tank is just a bit of fun to drive over the
occasional tree. Or car. Or house.

July 2012

September 2012

Cosmetic items go on sale in RuneScape’s
first in-game store.

Accounts charged with botting go on public trial in
a new area.

Solomon’s General Store

Botany Bay

PRESENTS RUNESCAPE 17

2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013

Going to war is more
action-packed than ever.

Major changes are
in store for 2013.

If 2007’s controversial Wilderness
changes betrayed a misunderstanding
of the community’s willingness to give
up features for the sake of the game,
then 2012’s answer to the botting
problem neatly bookends this era in
the game’s life. In September, Jagex
introduced Botany Bay – a special
island where accounts accused of
unscrupulous or exploitative play are
sent for trial.
“We wanted to put it in the players’
faces so they could see what was going
on,” Mark Ogilvie explains. “There
was a lot of frustration, from a player’s
perspective, when they reported a bot
but then didn’t see anything happen.
Giving a visual representation of what
was going on live in the game was a
very positive thing – they can see the
bots being picked up and grabbed
by a giant hand and taken out
of the game.”
Players can visit
Botany Bay in person
to vote on an array

of punishments. Troublemakers
can be crushed, incinerated or eaten
by a giant worm at the conclusion of a
mock trial conducted by RuneScape’s
Botfinder General.
“From a creative perspective, we
liked the idea of the Salem Witch
Trials,” Ogilvie says. “I think what
we did with Botany Bay was the first
instance of showing them what was
going on rather than trying to sweep it
under the carpet. So many games are
influenced by gold farmers, but they
stick their fingers in their ears and
pretend that it’s not going on.”
This enthusiasm for transparency is
refreshing, not only because it helps to
build trust within a long-standing and
sometimes fractious community, but
because it exposes the human side to
Jagex’s deep and complex adventure
game. In February, Jagex launched a
poll to ask players whether or not
they’d like to see servers running an
older, pre-Evolution of Combat
version of RuneScape from 2007.
The community’s enthusiasm for
the idea says something about the
history of the game – that there are as
many RuneScapes as there are people
who have played it, and that its future
is not only found in the forward march
of technology and content. It’s in its
past, too – in reclaiming and
celebrating years of passionate
development work.
RuneScape is a nominee in the ‘Best
Online – Browser’ category at this
year’s BAFTA awards, an accolade that
brand director Simon Etchells says
testifies to just how far the game has
come. “BAFTA agree with us that it’s
almost a new game,” he says. “It’s great
to be recognised for that.”

November 2012

February 2013

February 2013

A major update significantly changes the
rhythm and balance of battling.

The community votes for ‘old-school’
servers, running RuneScape circa 2007.

RuneScape is nominated for ‘Best Online –
Browser’ at the 2013 BAFTA awards.

Combat Evolved

18

PRESENTS RUNESCAPE

Old School Servers

BAFTA Nomination!

advertising feature

TH E F U T U R E
OF

Jagex aren’t quite ready to reveal all the
changes that are coming to RuneScape in
2013, but there are some exciting things
on the horizon. We spoke to executive
producer Phil Mansell to get a sense of
what to expect...
What are the key ways that the game
will change this year?
RuneScape is going to be taking a big
evolutionary step forward, with almost
all aspects of the game getting a major
improvement or overhaul.
We have a new game engine that runs in
HTML5 – which will mean better visuals and
audio – but it still runs instantly from within
your web browser. In terms of gameplay,
we will be kicking off an epic campaign of
episodic content, with gigantic world events
where players get to decide the outcome.
We’ve also updated how players interact with
the game, including new interfaces, camera
system and controls. And that’s just the start
of things...

How will existing players be involved?
We’ve always had a close relationship with
our community but we’re going to push that
even further this year, as player empowerment
is a central theme of RuneScape in 2013. The
cornerstone will be a player-driven narrative,
where the community will steer the story
through their actions in-game and leave
permanent changes to the game world.
How are you making sure that the game
stays competitive in a crowded market?
We’re happy to be different and to set our
own course. RuneScape has always been a
distinctive experience and, even now, there
are few online RPGs that offer anywhere near
the scale, freedom and choice that our game
has. That said, we know we need to keep
evolving and improving, and that includes
building on our thin-client technology,
innovating with gameplay content, continuing
to update the game’s visuals and audio,
and even looking for future expansions onto
mobile and tablet devices.